Thread: DACA renewal deadline is Thursday

DACA renewal deadline is Thursday


Activist and DACA recipient Itzel Guillen (L) works with Hiram Soto at Alliance San Diego. The organization is offering
free office hours for DACA recipients who need help filing renewal applications before Thursday's deadline.
(JOHN GASTALDO / Reuters Photo)

October 3, 2017

Dreamers must submit renewal applications before Thursday for a program that is winding down under the Trump administration that allows them to work legally and protects them from deportation.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, will end March 5, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced last month. From that point on, participation in the program will wane over time as permits expire. Program participants whose permits were set to expire before then are able to renew as long as immigration offices receive their paperwork by
Oct. 5.

Hiram Soto, spokesman for Alliance San Diego, a nonprofit that has advocated for the program, said that DACA recipients wanting to renew can still get their applications in on time if they overnight them by Wednesday.

Alliance San Diego is holding DACA “office hours” this week to help anyone with application questions for free.

Itzel Guillen, a DACA recipient and organizer at Alliance San Diego, said the organization has gotten a lot of calls, but only a few have been eligible to renew. The other callers’ permits expire after March 5.

“There’s definitely a lot of panic and a lot of confusion,” Guillen said.

The ones who are eligible are rushing to get their applications in on time, she said.

“Thursday, unfortunately, it’s too late,” Guillen said. “If it’s not in USCIS hands by the 5th, it’s not going to be received.”

She hopes that most who were eligible to renew have already submitted their applications.

Several organizations, including Alliance and Mission Asset Fund, have offered to pay the $495 application fee for those who can’t afford it.

DACA began in 2012 and gave two-year renewable permits to unauthorized immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children.

Critics of the program said that it was an overreach of executive power by the Obama administration.

Before President Donald Trump took office, he said he would end the program. After his inauguration, he seemed to go back and forth on the issue for months before deciding to wind it down. He said he hoped it would give Congress time to pass legislation that would protect dreamers.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/...003-story.html

Let work permits expire and they go back to their countries and get in line like everybody else on the Planet.

You have stole enough from our generous country.

Go build "America" on your soil.